1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the management of media content. More particularly, the present invention relates to computer mediated selection of digital media content.
2. Background Art
Traditionally, the availability of publicly accessible media content, such as broadcast television (TV) content, has been managed by the entities, such as TV networks, providing the content. As a result, consumers had a fairly limited menu of content items from which to identify desirable content. In that traditional media environment, consumers identified and located desirable media content through a program listing, which in the early days of broadcast TV was typically a paper listing, and more recently began to be provided as an electronic listing, such as an Electronic Program Guide for example. While this conventional approach to enabling identification of desirable media content may have been helpful to consumers when their choices were relatively limited, it has grown progressively more inefficient, and less effective, as available media content has proliferated.
The emergence of the Internet, for example, as a computer network resource enabling consumers to obtain media content online, has only made the deficiencies of the traditional approach more acute. Paradoxically, the ready availability of so much content so easily obtained, may have served as much to hinder as to enhance accessibility of that content to consumers, and may make it actually less likely that the consumer will successfully identify and locate content of genuine interest to them. For the consumer of today, identifying and locating content of real interest can be a time consuming and frustrating experience despite its abundant availability.
For example, consider the case of a consumer seeking to access a digital multimedia presentation corresponding to desirable TV programming, online. One conventional approach to assisting a consumer to locate desirable content borrows from the broadcast TV model by merely providing a listing of available content. That approach is particularly inefficient due to the vast amount of content from which the consumer can typically now choose.
Another conventional approach utilizes standard computer based information management tools to assist the consumer in identifying the desired presentation from a library of available content items. According to that approach, the consumer might be required to sort through the available content items, categorized according to genre, subject matter, or other criteria, to locate a particular desired presentation. This latter approach provides the consumer with some ability to discriminate among available content items according to broad themes, but provides a relatively rudimentary means for discovering specific content of genuine interest.
The greater variety of media content now available to consumers also has consequences for advertisers seeking to target a viewing audience. In the traditional broadcast TV environment, for example, advertisers could simply purchase advertising time and be reasonably assured that consumers, i.e. TV viewers, were being exposed to the overt marketing content delivered during those intervals. In the online media consumption environment of today, however, advertisers must more actively attract consumers, and sometimes do so by embedding marketing content into an advertising product that also comprises a substantial entertainment component, such as an interactive puzzle or game.
This relatively recent approach to providing marketing content may provide consumers with a heterogeneous advertising product comprising a suite of content including overt marketing materials, interactive entertainment content, and content elements blending those two concepts. A subset of that content may be provided to a consumer in a predetermined advertising spot, resembling a conventional commercial, while the remainder of the content may simply be available for the consumer to engage at will. A significant challenge for advertisers utilizing this approach may be to regain the attention and interest of the consumer after the predetermined ad spot has played, so that the consumer will voluntarily engage the remaining advertising content, and thus more fully absorb the embedded marketing message.
As has been explained, conventional approaches to providing media content no longer effectively assist consumers in identifying desirable content within the ever growing media libraries from which that content can now be selected. Furthermore, those conventional approaches no longer adequately assure advertisers that marketing content is being delivered to targeted consumers. Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a solution enabling consumers to readily identify and navigate to desirable media content. The solution should additionally provide a means for advertisers to deliver marketing content to consumers in a manner that engages the consumer as a participant in an interactive process.